Undying Promise
by StandingOnTheRooftops
Summary: Heero decides to keep an old promise, and finds more than he expected. 1xOC, so you are warned. Fluff and sappiness abound.


**Undying Promise**

**Author: Delilah, aka StandingOnTheRooftops**

DJ: Here we go. Yet another one-shot.

Wufei: Ignorant Onna!

DJ: What did I do?

Wufei: Injustice! Why am I here?

DJ: Because Duo hit me with a skillet?

Wufei: *sweatdrops* Sally! Save me!

DJ: *smacks him on top of head* Alright, Wuffles. Do the disclaimer.

Wufei: Eh... DJ, aka StandingOnTheRooftops does not own Gundam Wing... or me! Thank Nataku for that!

DJ: Hey, I can still write fanfiction. So shut up before I write a 5x2!

Wufei: *runs away* Sally! Help! Injustice!

DJ: Oh, goodness. Anyway, all this fluff is dedicated to Cltc, for putting up with all the angst and darkness in How to Save A Life. So, I hope you enjoy this fic.

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**Undying Promise**

Heero dumped the contents of the bag over the bed. It wasn't much. One change of clothes. Two pistols. A laptop computer, and a few other little electronic devices. His whole life was in that bag. What a pathetic life.

He picked the bag up and started to toss it against the wall, but something else fell out. A seashell. An average sized plain oyster, both halves still hinged together, but the inside scooped away to reveal the brilliant rainbow hued nacre. He picked up the shell gently, holding it in the palm of his hand.

"Keep it," she'd said. "I know you'll come back one day. Promise me you'll come back."

"I will. One day."

She'd smiled through her tears. "Then go ahead and go. You'll keep your promise."

He stared at the shell as if it were alive, as if the emotions attached to it were tangible through the scarred outside, the smooth inside. It had been years. At least five years gone by since then. He felt the smooth nacar on the inside. A thin strand of long, long black hair was nestled inside it.

He'd promised. Could he go back? The war was over, had been over for a while now. Missions had settled down to only one every few months. The galaxy was shifting back into peace. There was no need for him here. The Preventers could make due without him.

But it was all he knew. He wasn't part of her world.

But he could have been. It might not have been a smooth, seamless fit, but he had fit in. And it had felt right.

Maybe he could have a life outside the cockpit of the Wing Zero. A life to big, to full to fit in a grimy old duffel bag.

Maybe he could go back to the one place he'd felt at home.

Maybe.

He was right. He should have just left with no word. But it would be wrong. They worried. He wouldn't add to their problems. But they just stared at him.

The baka's mouth hung open. Quatre looked highly surprised. Trowa raised an eyebrow, and Wufei meerely stared.

"But... but what about Releena," Quatre asked finally.

"What about her?"

"I thought... well... she..."

"Too much of a nag," Duo said at last. "If she can't see by now that he's not interested in her as anything more than a sister or something, she ought to have her brain checked. Second thought, she ought to have her brain checked anyway."

"Where are you going?" Quatre asked.

"Somewhere."

"Which means you aren't going to tell us, right?"

"Yes."

Quatre looked at him. Probably doing his weird space-heart thing, Heero thought. And Heero knew that Quatre knew he wasn't coming back.

Wufei stuck out his hand, obviously coming to the same conclusion himself.

"It has been an honor to fight alongside you, Heero Yui. Maybe one day, we'll do it again."

"I hope not," Duo said as Heero took Wufei's hand and shook it. Heero understood the sentiment- to fight alongside them again after this... would mean another war. Something no one wanted. Heero repeated the process with all four of the other Gundam pilots. Duo pulled him forward into a rough hug, though, before stepping back, just a hint of red on his cheeks. Of them all... Heero would miss him the most.

"The Wing Zero?" Duo asked. Heero could tell it was upsetting the annoying little idiot, and he actually felt a pang of sadness for causing the boy such stress and sadness. But it didn't matter. Heero had made up his mind.

"Is staying. I will not need it."

Quatre looked worried. And Heero understood why. Heero Yui, the perfect soldier, without the Wing Zero? It was incomprehensible to them. They would understand one day, he thought as he turned, and with his meager little bag, set out.

_He woke up with a bad headache, and he could tell that he was bruised, broken, and bandaged all over. He knew the feeling. He consentrated on his surroundings. The bed was too soft to be a hospital. And the air didn't have the zing of of a hospital either. There was antiseptic, but it was overlayed by the smell of tropical fruit, and sea-salt. He opened his eyes, let them adjust to the bright light. Certainly not a hospital. And hopefully, not the enemy either._

_"You're awake," someone said. A light, breezey voice carried softly through the room. He leaned up, careful of what felt like a just-dislocated shoulder and several broken ribs._

_"Careful. You took quite a beating."_

_"Where am I?" he asked hoarsely, once his head had stopped spinning. He looked around._

_She sat on a chair beside the bed, a book open in her lap and a glass setting on the table beside her. A half-empty bowl of broth set beside the glass, and a tray with various medical supplies on it. She looked about his age... sixteen._

_"My house. My name's Gaia. We're on an island just north of Guam. Not many people here. So I was surprised to see you, washed up on the shore with a boatload of wreckage. I take it that it was an escape pod. Got caught in that big mess with those mobile suits, didn't you?"_

_"Hn."_

_"Not much of a talker, huh?" She sat up, set the book aside. "That's alright. I talk enough for three people, as my Da used to say." She picked up the bowl of broth, and walked over to the bed. Setting herself on the very edge, she held out both bowl and a spoon. "Can you use the spoon? 'Cause you need the fluids, and if you can't feed yourself... I'll have to do it for you. And you don't strike me as the kind of person who likes other people holding a spoon for you."_

_As an answer, Heero slid back on the pillows, sitting up, and took both bowl and spoon in almost steady, sure hands. She smiled brilliantly._

_"Good. Now if I can just get you to talk, we'll be all set."_

Heero looked at the long stretch of beach in front of him. The same shore, the same ocean. And somewhere down there... the same little house. With the same sweet, chattering woman. Five and a half years since he'd been here. Over five and half years... nearly six, he amended. Five years since he'd seen her, heard her. For three months, she was all he'd lived for. She was the only thing that kept him going on, kept him alive. And then he'd left, leaving nothing but a broken heart, a promise, and a pearl.

Did she still have that stupid little pearl? God knew she'd loved it when he first gave it to her. Just like she'd loved him.

_He found the oyster on his last dive of the day. He went diving at least three times every day. For food mostly, just something to 'earn his keep' as she'd explained his own reasoning to him. He had a few fish and the one oyster on the deck of the little boat. He skillfully cleaned the fish, placed them on ice for the ride back to the beach house. Then he took his knife to pry open the oyster. And scooping out the flesh, he found the little pearl. It wasn't round, or white. It was oblong, kind of like a tear drop, and it was a bluish black with flashes of red and purple. It didn't have quite the pearly sheen, that brilliant luster, that most high quality pearls did, but he guessed it was still pretty- as long as you werent' a perfectionist. _

_Gaia was a long way from being a perfectionist. _

_She let him live in her house, and she did all manner of things for him. All he did was fish and do a little handy-work around the house. He looked around the boat. There was a little bit of thin leather thong that Gaia used for odds and ends and sundry purposes. And a little metal wire, too. He made a small cage out of two thin strips of wire, dropped the pearl in, and secured the wire to a strip of thong. Simple. Not very elegant, or even very pretty. But comfortable, simple. Like Gaia._

_And she loved it. She'd put it on right the moment he'd given it to her, and she hadn't taken if off for the three more weeks he'd been there._

Heero glanced at the house, it's wide rambling porch supported by stilts, set back from the beach, almost in the trees and well clear of the highest high tide markers. It was the same... but it was different. Those were the same orchids blooming against the stair rail. Those were the same flower pots sitting by the corner. These were the same cobble stone stepping stones, partially covered in sand. That same white jeep half-hidden around the back. But there were new things here.

A tiny pink bicycle with training wheels tipped over on the porch. A bright purple bouncy ball stuck under the steps. A pair of itty bitty pink sandles lying by the front door. He heard a squeal, saw the girl skid to a stop in front of him, coming around the corner of the house at high speed. After the sand settled, he just stared at the girl. She looked around four years old, maybe almost five. She was barefoot... it seemed like those sandles might be hers... and she wore a rumpled pink sundress with tiny green and yellow flowers on it.

But that wasn't what got him to stare. And it wasn't really that somewhat familiar shade of chocolate brown hair that fell in bouncing curls around her chubby, flushed cheeks.

It was her eyes.

They were Prussian blue... they were his.

_She was a little surprised when he gave her the pearl... but she'd loved it. And she was even more surprised when he kissed her.... but from the way she kissed him back, she'd loved that as well. She'd seemed to love everything he did. When he kissed her lips, or touched her hair, or breathed along the shell of her ear. He didn't know why... but she'd loved him. She never pressured him about his past... and he'd always had the feeling she knew more about it than she let on. And she'd not been that upset when he'd told her he was leaving, she'd not begged him to stay, not broken down and sobbed her sorrows. She'd just asked for that one little thing. His promise._

_And he'd given it willingly._

She came around the corner moments after the toddler, her face bright and smiling, a little pearl dangling around her neck. She looked at him, and something flashed over her features. But she kept on smiling, at him. She scooped up the pink-clad little girl in her arms and walked towards him, the girl balanced on her hip expertly.

"Heero Yui... I'd like you to meet Yasmin... your daughter."

He continued to stare as the girl hugged onto the woman in front of him.

Gaia sighed a little, but still smiled. She set the girl down.

"Yassy... why don't you go on inside and find Mr. Snuggle bear?"

When the girl had successfully made it in the door, Gaia grabbed at him, pulled him into a hug.

"I knew you'd come back," she whispered. She pulled away, took his hand to pull him up the steps, into the house.

"You've been gone awhile... alot's changed around here."

He looked around the living room. It looked like a family room... that had been lived in by a family. There were little girls shoes tucked up against the wall. A few coloring books strewn across the low-lying table. Crayons scattered over top of them. There were alot of pictures, too. Most of them were of Gaia and the little girl Yasmin. But there were pictures of him, too.

One of him on the boat, hauling a load of fish up. One of him and Gaia taken at a nice little restaurant in the closest town. One of him and her on the beach at a bon-fire party. One of her tickling him mercilessly earlier on that same bon-fire day. It really was his only weakness... and the expression on his face was caught between anger and laughter.

He'd given little opportunity for pictures... but here they were, just waiting on him.

She'd been sixteen... he'd been sixteen... and here, five years later, here was a daughter he'd never known about. A home. A family.

"Now that the war's over and there's no need for the Gundams..." she said softly, "Have you come back to me? To be part of a family? Are you ready to be part of this family?"

He didn't question how she knew about the Gundams... she'd always knew more than she let on... the less he said, the more she seemed to know.

Yasmin ran up to him, a large stuffed rabbit in her tiny hands.

"Are you really my daddy?" She asked, looking up at him with those big, bright blue eyes. The same eyes he saw every time he looked in a mirror... only without the shadows, the guilt, the pain. Mercifully innocent. He felt the ice around his heart start to melt as the girl smiled up at him.

His daughter.

He knelt down, surprised when she threw her arms around him. He answered Yasmine and Gaia's questions both with the same answer. The only answer he could find in him.

"Yes... I guess I am."

~OWARI~

DJ: Ah... it seems Wufei has left. He was muttering something about crazy onna's, injustice, and 'that damn braided baka'. That just leaves me, so I'm going to go and leave just you. Reviews please! A little off my beaten path of strict 1x2 and 3x4 (With the exception of the rare 1xR, and my to-date single 1x4. I thought I had a fic that was 2xOC, so.... why not a 1xOC? I think I'll make like an arc or something, and do a OC fic for all the pilots. Hm... it's an idea.). Tell me what you thought, and if you'd like a sequel to this, cause I'm thinking about one. Anyway, TTFN!


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